Everybody loves to hear a band! A parade wouldn’t be a parade wit out one, and can you imagine the circus without a band? Nowadays, a band has even become part of our sports activities, and school bands play at all the big games.

The first brass bands were nothing like our bands of today. A few traveling musicians would appear here and there, play for a while, and then move on. By the end of the thirteenth century, however, these bands had grown in size and had become so popular that they began to form special organizations. They established guilds just as did people who specialized in other kinds of work, and these guilds had rules and regulations and guarded the rights of the musicians who played in bands.